The Woods and the trees

What a year this has been. A year of thrills, hope, laughter, sadness and joy to rival any soap opera, particularly if it was a long, complicated soap opera starring Tony Abbott. As we farewell not just a year, but the decade 2000-2009, a decade which I think - and you may disagree - was at least the equal of 1999-2008 or even 1995-2004, it is worth looking back and considering what we may learn from the events of the last twelve months. It is likely the answer will be, as it has been throughout recorded history, absolutely nothing, but you never know.

The year began in hope as President Barack Obama took office and good-hearted people around the world looked forward to a new era of integrity and progressiveness in the White House. And indeed those hopes have been realised beyond any of our wildest dreams, as within just one year Obama has succeeded not only in winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his bold actions in declaring war to be not, strictly speaking, ideal, but also, on the domestic front, almost convincing Congress to pass a bill providing universal health care, although he did have to make certain concessions, such as allowing the word "universal" to be put in quotation marks throughout the bill, and specifying that animal shelters count as primary care for the unemployed. So for these monumental achievements, Obama has already, in his first year in office, truly earned the historical accolade "best US President of the decade".

Of course, at home the political landscape was as full of fascination and excitement and eye-gougingly interesting manoeuvres as ever. The year started with Australia staring down the barrel of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and yet ended with Australia standing atop the world, laughing mockingly at other economies as our own swaggered forwards full of confidence and joie de vivre, thanks to Kevin Rudd's radical re-interpretation of the "trickle-down" theory, the "shove money down everyone's throats" theory. It worked pretty well, the stimulus building confidence, injecting vital cash into the economy, and causing periodic giggling fits amongst bank executives. Although former Treasurer Peter Costello did sound a note of caution, pointing out that while it was true the stimulus was supported by most respected economists and worked pretty much exactly as intended, it should never, ever be forgotten how great Peter Costello was.

The Opposition itself, while dabbling in critiques of the economic stimulus, spent most of the year finding other ways to amuse itself. Many of these revolved around Malcolm Turnbull, the noble marsupial of Australian politics, who early on stood proud and defiant before a rampantly popular government and declared that no matter the slings and arrows, no matter the smear campaigns, no matter the obfuscation and misdirection and spin employed by his adversaries, he would stand fast and keep fighting the good fight on behalf of all his fellow Australians, the good fight in this case mostly consisting of hiring mentally ill civil servants to tell him bedtime stories.

Yes, in many ways Godwin Grech was the man of the year, if only for injecting a touch of old-fashioned mystery into politics, a bit of juicy Machiavellian back-room scheming, a sense of intrigue that had us all questioning what was truth, how corrupt were our leaders, and why Malcolm Turnbull would stake his political career on the testimony of a man who gave the impression of dividing his spare time between all-night Dungeons and Dragons sessions and feeding on insects and small mammals.

Not that Turnbull left immediately after the Grech affair, of course. Indeed, 2009 may well be remembered as the year when Turnbull showed his resilience, surviving "UteGate", "Terrible PollsGate", and "Not Very Good At This JobGate", only to be stunningly laid low by "Psychotic CatholicsGate".

And who could have predicted such a development? At the start of 2009, Tony Abbott seemed to be keeping a low profile. He was fading from many memories. Already a consensus was growing that there had never actually been a "Tony Abbott", that he was just a folk tale invented to scare children into voting. And yet here we are at the end of the year and Abbott, the man they said would never amount to much due to his religious extremism and terrifying smile, has defied the tag of hopeless Howard throwback to ascend to a position where he could, quite conceivably, by this time next year, suffer a nervous breakdown and attempt to give Julia Gillard a lovebite.

The big point of difference in Australian politics in late 2009 was of course climate change, with many Opposition members steadfastly maintaining that for the sake of Australian jobs, we must do nothing, while the government just as steadfastly declared that for the good of the planet, we urgently and without delay do slightly more than nothing, so that by 2020 carbon emissions will be at no more than 98 percent of 2019 levels, thus saving the Great Barrier Reef. Tony Abbott himself proposed direct action rather than market-based solutions: for example, he suggested that instead of sending major emitters compensation cheques, the government use BPay.

Fortunately, the Copenhagen conference produced an historic result, with the nations of the world making a concrete commitment to slash carbon emissions as soon as everyone else does, and in the meantime to seriously consider buying a Prius.

There was more to the year than politics, though. In the entertainment world, we saw the triumphant return of Hey Hey It's Saturday, proving yet again that what audiences want is good old-fashioned variety, wholesome family fun, and wacky racism. At the same time, the radio world was left in shock as a plan to hook a fourteen-year-old up to a lie detector and quiz her about her sex life before a live national audience took an unexpectedly sordid turn, and Australia shook its head in disgust as The Chaser finally came clean and admitted that their entire satirical career had merely been a smokescreen for their secret plan to destroy the lives of sick children. Also in entertainment, we saw the demise of many favourites, including "King of Pop" Michael Jackson, whose death brought forth a torrent of public tributes, tearful reminiscences, and witty paedophile jokes which proved that even in death, Jackson was able to make us smile.

However, possibly the biggest celebrity news came toward the end of the year, with the revelation that champion golfer and revered family man Tiger Woods was guilty of infidelity with a series of women numbering somewhere between five and eighty. The greater sporting public, shaken to their cores by the unpleasant thought that talented sportspeople might in some way possess the potential for immorality, thus found themselves ending 2009 in a mood of reflection, pondering their own moral compasses and, with Woods on indefinite hiatus, realising that golf is in fact a horribly boring game.

And in the end, 2009 will be a year defined by these words "reflection", "immorality" and "horribly boring". A year where noble hope collided with base corruption, where partisan politics tangled with lofty idealism, where simple comedy was inextricably entwined with politically correct intellectual fascism, and where fires in Victoria, dust storms in Sydney, and Kevin Andrews's bid to become prime minister in Canberra all signalled the increasing probability that the apocalypse is very nearly upon us.

And so as we look forward to 2010, which will with any luck be a year of less moral ambiguity, less political expediency, less fatal paralysis on the future of the planet, and less Daryl Somers, it's important to remember: no matter how bad things get in any given year, we are all, in the end, doomed.